I was(am) a big supporter of this change, because I feel that the spirit of it was to reduce time doing unfun things. Gathering haste, or gold for healing, or gold for buying healing preps is unfun. In this way, the change is in my opinion a success. However, taken overall this change has failed in it's goal.

Why? It makes no difference to me whether I am spending 10 minutes gathering a prep, or healing from combat, it is still time I am not having fun. If I was just in a fight, and protected myself before that fight, I agree that returning to the fight should be more than the simple matter of popping a few pills, or heading to my friendly neighboorhood NPC healer. However, if I must now sleep until my protections wear off, and then sleep some more because I was regening like crap, have I not just spent a roughly equivalent amount of time as if I had been out gathering gold or a haste prep? If I'm not using a healer or healing items, it is going to take more than the duration of barrier for me to heal enough to return to the fight. In that time period, my opponent should be healing as well.

There are situations where this is not entirely the case. If I have hurt the regen of my opponent through bleeding or poison, or other regen affecting skills, then certainly I will heal faster, and him not, but is this not the advantage that those skills bring? If I have a regen shifter form, or the ivory troll amulet I will heal faster as well, but is that not the advantage of those things as well?

Overall I think that the change was one step forward and one step back. Sitting around healing up after a fight is no more fun than prep gathering (and perhaps less fun) and yet this is how I now spend my time. Before this change, I could heal and return within 5-10 ticks, depending on how badly I was hurt, and if I was maledicted. Now, I estimate that I spend at least double that.

Tac

Still bored at work.

>Why? It makes no difference to me whether I am spending 10
>minutes gathering a prep, or healing from combat, it is still
>time I am not having fun. If I was just in a fight, and
>protected myself before that fight, I agree that returning to
>the fight should be more than the simple matter of popping a
>few pills, or heading to my friendly neighboorhood NPC healer.
> However, if I must now sleep until my protections wear off,
>and then sleep some more because I was regening like crap,
>have I not just spent a roughly equivalent amount of time as
>if I had been out gathering gold or a haste prep?

Probably not. You can't really take your regeneration much past half normal without a small pile of allies. You're regenerating effective hp as fast as you would be if you used no protective affects.

>There are situations where this is not entirely the case. If
>I have hurt the regen of my opponent through bleeding or
>poison, or other regen affecting skills, then certainly I will
>heal faster, and him not, but is this not the advantage that
>those skills bring? If I have a regen shifter form, or the
>ivory troll amulet I will heal faster as well, but is that not
>the advantage of those things as well?

How are any of these things not still true? An anaconda that heals (let's say) half as fast as normal is still healing tres fast. Bleeding and poison still drive regeneration into the ground.

>Overall I think that the change was one step forward and one
>step back. Sitting around healing up after a fight is no more
>fun than prep gathering (and perhaps less fun) and yet this is
>how I now spend my time. Before this change, I could heal and
>return within 5-10 ticks, depending on how badly I was hurt,
>and if I was maledicted. Now, I estimate that I spend at
>least double that.

Assuming you're not bleeding/poisoned/plagued/whatever (in which case your HP regen would always be ass) I really can't imagine how that would even be possible unless you're like... a shifter that gears for hit points, refuses to slow themselves to heal faster for some bizarre RP reason, busts full A/B/S for every fight, and frequently has an invoker ally and a bard ally that won't sing healing songs for some reason... and even given all of that, you'd still have survived damage that would have killed you several times over without the DR and lived to tell about it.

The net effect is that regardless of extrinsic protections, you heal at roughly the same rate. Damage reduction of all forms are still very powerful and useful tools. There is no drawback to using them.

Let's say you fought without damage reduction (DR) and took 100 damage, which took 4 ticks to heal. Under the new system, if you had put up 50% DR before the fight, you'd have taken only 50 damage, but it would still take 4 ticks for it to heal. You're still in better shape than you were if you hadn't used the DR (you're only down 50 HP, and further from death), of course.

Previously, damage reduction not only effectively multiplied your base HP, but it also effectively multiplied the rate at which you heal. Now, it's only equivalent to having more base HP.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>The net effect is that regardless of extrinsic protections,
>you heal at roughly the same rate. Damage reduction of all
>forms are still very powerful and useful tools. There is no
>drawback to using them.

Except in groups, as I said in my other post. Although nobody answered my question, so I could be wrong. But if you're a healer and sanc your groupmate, you're now healing them 50%, right? So you've done nothing but break even so far (and wasted some mana). Except that now their natural healing is at 50% because of the sanc, so you're in the negative. If they also have a healing ability (like most classes do) then you lose that efficiency too.

Also, there may not be a drawback to using them, but someone who is good at healing gets much less benefit from them than someone whose strength isn't healing. Look at it this way.

a non-healer character with 1000 hitpoints taking 100 damage per round will die in 10 rounds. If he has 80% damage reduction he takes 20 damage per round and will die in 50 rounds. A warrior survives 5X longer with 80% damage reduction.

Compare to a character with 500 hitpoints, 250 mana and the ability to turn 10 mana into 20 hitpoints. Taking 100 damage per round he will also die in 10 rounds (500hp worth of mana). If he has 80% damage reduction he dies in 26 rounds (100hp worth of mana). This character survives 2.5X longer with 80% damage reduction.

So in this example the non-healer gets twice as much use out of damage reduction preps. Obviously this is quite simplified, but it shows the general idea that anyone who survives by healing has lost a lot of the utility that damage reduction preps afforded them. What I gather from this is that warriors were considered too weak and healing characters too strong.

correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't nep said a few times that sanc is different?

And so it goes...

Since I didn't offer any I thought I'd come up with some....

Normal Regen rates under protections of all types. The amount of damage you take has no effect on your internal ability to regenerate, only on outside sources of healing.

Normal Regen rates while fighting: Same as above, but specifically address regenerating shifter forms. Unfortunately also makes AP's able to regen via bloodlust faster than they take damage.

Normal Regen rates while *not* fighting: Regen shifter can hit and run, but AP doesn't get help. Also, allows for fleeing entirely without suffering all the increased downtime of healing. Still kinda nukes anaconda specifically and regen forms in general (though less so than current)

I personally would support 1, but there are a few options to consider along with whatever you are already looking at re: regen shifters and the overall change.

P.S. I understand it takes time to get a grasp on what the full effects of such a broad sweeping change such as this are. So long as you understand that some characters can't realistically wait a month for you to decide, I trust your judgement in deciding what is best for the greatest number of players.

Heheh, I hope someone uses barrier offensively to prevent healing. e.g., Invoker beats someone down a bit, then just before running off to heal, zaps the opponent with a barrier rod. Then the invoker pays for healing and comes back just in time for the barrier to drop.

AFAIK (and I know I've tried) you can't zap others with abs